Another Life, Imagined
A short story of fiction and what dreams may come
I was younger then and recently moved to the timeless Portuguese city of Coimbra, the original capital of Portugal. Unfortunately, the city was not on the coast, the river it possesses lay too far inland to navigate from the sea, so it languished beside other richer ports of call and Lisbon stole its crown.
Like the ancient city, I had lost the modest glories of my past as well. My marriage, a threatened shipwreck, I felt marooned in a strange new place, in a new teaching job, and not yet with friends. I used my free time for exploration of this enchanted place, still in the shadows of the old world.
Wandering the narrow paths or “becos” through historic Coimbra was a visual treat for me, sometimes enhanced by mouth-watering aromas escaping the shadowy dark openings to cafés or upper level apartments. All manner of eclectic shops were scattered among the doorways to commerce and the random complexity of an ancient European city with more history than hustle.
I loved photographing artful doorways, graffiti of notoriety, and the magical interplay of light and shadows for my own entertainment. But my poor Portuguese language skills usually limited opportunity for meaningful dialog with the people I met. However, that evening was anything but usual.
Roaming a narrow passage I hadn’t explored before, I noticed a half-open green wooden door, faded and weather beaten. It led through a low entrance cleft from another era with only a rough board sign outside hinting at its ambition. The vintage image of a human eye, the evermore symbol of conjurers, formed an ambiguous invitation to my curiosity. But my wildest imagination could not conceive of the mystery to which this doorway would lead. I ducked in under the door sill and tried to get my bearings. It didn’t work.
A small dimly lit room with a low ceiling was illuminated by a pair of flickering white candles set on an ornate wooden table whose supporting legs arose in a dense web of carvings suggestive of a thicket of thorny tree branches. Above the table a large baroque-framed likeness of an ancient Sultan, an off-white turban contrasting his lush ruby Kaftan. As my eyes adjusted to the soft light and a scent of sandalwood incense arose, I was aware the room lacked any other visible entrance or exit and appeared to be empty … until I sensed the Sultan’s dark eyes seemed to be following my movement.
A voice, with a French accent speaking in English, came from behind the painting and jarred me. I felt little goosebumps crawling up my neck
“Finally you have arrived Drew. Please be comfortable on the cushion in front of the table so our energies may mingle and enlighten our exploration of your journey,” said this unordinary voice.
“How do you know my … uh, sorry I’m not sure I know what this is? Maybe I’m in the wrong place.”
“You are here of your own volition. How could it be the wrong place, Drew?”
“Wait a minute… how do you … know my name?” The voice was silent. “Is this some kind of fortune telling thing… experience? I was only curious about what kind of …. of business this is and wandered in out of curiosity.”
“Everyone has questions. There are answers for you if you are ready to hear them,” said a voice with a different accent that seemed to be coming from behind me. I looked slowly over my shoulder … was there a shadowy figure in the darkest corner of the room?
“Thanks, but I didn’t come here for a fortune-telling and I’m not sure what all this is…”
“Monsieur Drew, les retrouvailles sont hors du temps, “ came the other distinctly French, feminine voice.
“Sorry, I don’t speak French…” I turned back and blinked twice at the framed image to be sure of what I now saw; the likeness of the Sultan had been replaced. A portrait of a soulful young woman in nun’s habit gazed back at me, the eyes now Mediterranean blue. My goosebumps reversed course and headed south along my spine.
‘There are moments that do not fit time,” the French accent replied.
My mind froze. I wasn’t sure if I was hallucinating or what was real or imagined. I was almost afraid to say anything and tried to think if I had eaten or had anything to drink that seemed unusual recently. Slowly moving backwards, I started toward the door, but the voice made me hesitate.
“If you leave now, you may never know.”
At that particular moment, I had absolutely no curiosity and little composure left. I mumbled a cursory Portuguese thank you, Obrigato, and turned for the doorway. As I stumbled out into the alley, the voice followed me with a final message.
“Leave the past where it is, behind you. But remember the woman; she may be the one.”
In the alleyway, I felt lightheaded, and looked for a place to sit down. I spied a cafe with a few tables at the end of a cul-de-sac. Several men sat smoking hand rolled cigarettes and enjoying cheap cervejas. They paused their animated conversation and looked questioningly at me as I sat heavily in an empty chair at an adjacent table. A man wearing a Portuguese flat cap called out to me, “Boa Noite, é inglês?”
“No, I’m an American…. sou Americano,” I replied.
He raised his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders and said something in a low voice to his companions. They all glanced at me briefly, then looked away and started talking again in Portuguese … or maybe Greek for all I know.
I tried to focus on what had just happened behind the green door, not on trying to make new friends. What was that place? What just happened? What woman to remember?
A waiter came over and silently bobbed his head upward, a gesture implying I should order something, so I got a coffee. After a few moments, it seemed to help my head to clear so I left a couple of euros on the table and headed back up the alleyway to take a another look at the source of my confusion.
I couldn’t find it. I was sure it was straight back down the path from the cafe, but there was no sign, no green door, nothing. I tried several the off-shoots of several alleys, but the green door no longer existed. Evidently, I hadn’t been there. Was it a figment of my imagination? Leaning heavily against a brick wall, I closed my eyes. I could feel it all there, the sandalwood scent, the low doorway, flickering candles, the Sultan, the nun, the haunting voices.
Footsteps alerted me to others walking by in the narrow passageway. I opened my eyes as several people passed, furtively glancing at my posture against the wall. I took a deep breath and straightened up to walk back home. A small white card lay at my feet, sharp, clean, looking recently dropped … or placed. I picked it up and read the bold print:
Your actions will change the path of your muse
Her map is now yours to confuse
Your True North will try to defuse
But fate will ignore and start the deluge
Little did I know that around the corner, not in those narrow passages, but in my life story, I would be kidnapped into a journey inhabited by a web of lies, tragedy, death and deceit. In the next few weeks, I would meet a woman who mystically would morph from assassin to seductress to platonic companion in less than a week. The best and the worst lie just beyond the horizon.
That was a long time ago, measured not in historic time, but in the modest estuary of a single human life time. Now I was adrift again, having lost my soulmate to the random tragedy of cruel accident. I felt my fingers slipping as I tried to cling to the sinking lifeboat of my rationality, a therapist’s couch.
The ex-pat community in Coimbra had grown considerably over the last several years. Usually 25-30 Ex-pats would show up at monthly meet-ups to socialize and share information and frustrations about the bureaucracies. At one of these meetings years ago, I heard Doctora Francesca LaCroix telling another expat that she was a semi-retired psychiatrist from France. That chance overheard comment had been a lifebuoy when crisis threatened to consume me and I called her.
Now at the end of our first session, I had some hope, a feeling of safe refuge on a sandbar of hopeful sanity. And then she told me a tale stranger than truth.
“There is one other thing,” she smiled sheepishly, “I have a confession... an apology of sorts, to make to you.” I stared blankly at her.
“A couple of years ago, I was helping my friend Jean-Paul, who was opening a small gallery in the Baixa. He was at that Ex-pat meeting where you and I first met, he said he remembered you. Anyway, it’s a little place and needed a lot work back then, but the rent was cheap. He hadn’t had the electricity turned on yet and we were working by candle light, cleaning up and trying to hang a few paintings when you wandered in. I think we spooked you a little. I’m sorry... we didn’t mean to.”
It took a minute for that to sink in. “But Doctora Francesca, I went back and tried to find that place again to ...to make sense of it, but I couldn’t find the green door,” I said.
“Oh that,” she laughed. “It was falling off the hinges. Jean-Paul had bought a new one and after we hung it, we finished for the day.”
“But what about that note you left in the alleyway, that white card?”
Doctora Francesca frowned. “What note? We didn’t leave any note.”